Tuesday... Last night was the Monday night Oostende fireworks on the beach. Pretty cool - the boardwalk gets packed with people and the show is kinda cool. You can have a beer and some ice cream or a waffle. We raced twice this weekend. Was in the first chase group towards the end of Sunday's race and heading through the very rough and dangerous cobbles section for the second time when my small group of six was decimated by an oil slick down the center. Apprently, one of the team cars following the breakaway had some trouble and created about a 12 inch by 1km oil slick down the center and safe part of the cobbles - Talk about dumb luck! Did a bit of tumbling and beat up the body and bike a bit. Bryan was in the large group behind and went down right in front of me - I had a front row seat to watch him get run over by a bunch of guys from behind - It looked very painful!. That was the end of the race for ABC-Aitos...
Yesterday, we raced in Moorsele - a bunch of laps around a 10km course. Sort of a kermesse/interclub thing. It was very hot, and that turned out to be about the biggest challenge. I was in the chase/lead group up until about 20-30km to go and ran out of steam. Ended up at 23rd. Couldn't hardly breath after the race - Doc says my lungs might be overreacting to the heat - I think that means asthma brought on by heat and hard efforts... Almost crashed right in front of the team car - Clipped a pedal in a really sharp turn - schwoo...
Next races are a kermis on Thursday and an interclub on Sunday. We're busy this month!
7/23/02Back in Belgium... Came back to nice, balmy, mid-60s weather in Belgium. Of course, it being July and all, today the clouds are rolling in and it is raining a bit. I don't feel like doing anything! Haven't gotten around to putting my bike back together and everything is pissing me off - messy roommate, no coffee in the house, messy trash piles - ahhh, jet lag.
Had a great trip to Nashville - Stayed in a great house North of town with my aunt's sister, Sue. She was a great host and made my trip really easy. The riding is not too bad there either - Rolling hills and lots of green stuff. The drivers gave me all kinds of space and people seemed pretty friendly. The kids looked at me like I was from Mars when I walked around in my gear. On the downside, it has that East coast high temperature and humidity thing. They also have some odd bugs - chiggers... The legendary chiggers inspire great fear in me. It also sounds like you are lost deep in the jungle when you go outside at night.
The Nationals race itself was not bad. I think we must have had 200 starters. It was pretty slow and not nearly as aggressive as the racing over here. There were only a couple of large teams that could really afford to attack and take risks so that made it difficult to really get any strong counters to the early break. The race was pretty much controlled from the start by the GoMart team who had a guy or two in the first break. The biggest problem was the temperature - I drank 2 big bottles and 10 small bottles of water! I was getting the heat-chills during part of the race in the 90+ degree weather - Had a nice headache that night. I give the assholes award to Wheelworks/Cannondale who sent all of there guys to the front at the neutral feed on lap 5. Is that the only way you guys can drop people? I hung out in the pack until later in the race and finally got into a chase group with 7 or so others at about ten miles to go - too little too late to catch the strong early 12-man break. We were sprinting for 12th and I, of course, was last at 21st!
7/16/02Raced the GP de Dourges in France on Sunday - Long 181km race with lots of turns, slight uphills and some wind - My job for the day was to watch the early and middle race stuff and try to stay fresh to work if we missed anything important. I ended up jumping on a good-looking 10 man breakaway in the first 10km. We got up to around a 2 minute gap and were flying - I guess we did 90km in 2 hours. Felt pretty good, but started to blow when the breakaways started to attack at 100-120km. I think I dropped at 120-140km and was subsequently dropped completely from the peloton... Would have liked to have been able to hang in at the end, but its not too big a deal - my job was done - Unfortunetly, During my trip backwards, I found that the team suffered from several flats and difficult conditions, so we were a bit devestated at the finish and we only had 2 out of 9 at the end.
7/9/02Countdown to Nationals - Back in the USA next Monday - Nationals on the 20th. Did a couple of UCI races this weekend. Felt pretty good - Raced well after the 100km point when it got fast. Didn't make it into the front groups, but was close on Sunday - Couldn't cover enough attacks to make a 15-man split and ended up in the group going for 17th. The whole team finished together in that group. Ended up 22nd on Monday in a group sprinting for 14th or something. We got pretty close to the front group and ended up at a minute and a half behind the winner. Sunday's race had the worst cobbled sections that I have ever raced on! 2 sections of around 3km - Was at the front for the first section, but crashed in the mud trying to avoid some guy who had crashed right in the middle. Both races were pretty sketchy before they got fast and tired out the pretenders. Sunday had endless turns and Monday was car, roundabout and pillar avoidance at high speed! Next race is a kermis in Gistel - Musseuw's hometown - on Thursday. We have a Bastille-day race in France on Sunday - Apparently its 190km...
7/3/02July! 2 months to go! We have begun July with some rain - Did a 5 hour endurance-type ride in the wind and rain on Monday. That was tough. Couple of easy days and then we race Thursday. A couple more of the vacationing residents came back - Mike made coffee again this morning - Seems to have gotten the first half a little better, but I had to stop him from turning off the coffee-maker after it quit bubbling - He was waiting desperately for that thing to finish! This is a big weekend - two UCI races, and Ryan (Minnie-AJ) is coming to town for a visit. Tour also starts Saturday in Luxembourg. Speaking of the Tour - was in a chocolate shop in Brugge when a couple of ladies asked the favorite of American tourist jokes - "Here for the Tour?"... "Je parle pas d'anglais, madame"... or, I guess "Ik sprecht de engels niet" or something like that???
Got my ticket for Nashville - All set to go to Nashville to try my legs at Nationals. Gives me something to shoot for and will be a bit of a break from the Belgian scene to split up the last two months. 100 degrees and high humidity - gee, can't wait...
Got the calendar updates for the rest of the season - We have one or two UCI races per week and there will be plenty of kermis to fill in the gaps. I think I will be tired of racing by October!